He pounded into her again and again, and she clung to him, accepting it. Accepting him. Taking every last drop of him, and claiming him, indelibly, forever, as hers.
Chapter Fifteen
Violet woke, uncertainof where she was.
She blinked herself awake, her gaze taking in her surroundings. The wall coverings were cheerful and blue and hung with pastoral oil pictures. The room was narrow and long, low-ceilinged.
Harlton Hall, she recalled.
It was the third roof above her head in nearly as many days. But this day, unlike all the rest in recent memory, she awoke as someone else.
A wife.
A lover.
This morning, she was the Duchess of Strathmore, and there was a large, solid, masculine presence in the bed alongside her. A long leg tangled with hers. A heavy arm draped over her waist. Hot breath fanning over her nape. And Wicked Violet was quiet and sated at last, right alongside her heart.
Slowly, taking great care not to wake him, she turned to face her husband. In slumber, he was just as infallibly gorgeous as he was awake. But there was something more intimate about watching him sleep, something that called to her on a deeper level than the mere surface. Yes, he was so beautiful he took her breath, but here, in the morning light, he possessed a vulnerable softness ordinarily absent.
It was as if she had been granted a peek at another Griffin entirely, the Griffin he had been before he had been traumatized by his imprisonment. Whatever had happened to him had been worse than the scars and pain those terrors had left behind, she was certain. How she wished he had been willing to bare himself before her completely, to show her that part of himself he still kept at bay.
But he had met her halfway, and she knew what his concession must have cost him, and she was grateful for it. Indeed, she was grateful for him. How impossible it was to think mere weeks ago, he had not even been a part of her life. Now, he was hers, and her heart was full just looking at him; so very full.
He was hers to love, hers to heal. She was prepared to go to battle for him, to fight to win his heart. She would slay his demons, show him his scars were a part of him, and that she loved all of him. One day, he would trust her with himself, she vowed. One day he would be completely hers.
He woke then, slowly and adorably, blinking at her with his beautiful cobalt eyes, his face still relaxed in sleep. And then he bestowed a smile upon her she felt all the way to her tingling toes.
“Am I dreaming you, spitfire?” he asked, his voice extra deep and rough from his rest.
“No more than I am dreaming you,” she returned with a hesitant smile of her own.
All the fears crowding her mind at the wedding breakfast had dispersed, first in the wake of their time together in the tower when she had realized she loved him, and later in his arms. She was not her mother, and neither was Griffin his father. They were themselves, and together they would forge their own path.
United.
“I can scarcely believe you are mine,” he said softly, interrupting her whirling thoughts.
His words sent a wave of warmth washing over her, for she felt the same way about him. He was unfairly handsome, it was true, and yet so sweet. No man had ever made her feel the way Griffin did.
She smiled at him, unable to keep herself from reaching out to him. She framed his face in her hands, careful to keep from touching him anywhere he had scars. She would not push him or force him into revealing more of himself than he was willing. After all, she had the rest of her life to earn it. “Thank you for being patient with me yesterday. For listening to me. For not thinking me mad. And thank you for sharing a part of yourself with me in turn.”
He kissed her, just a slow, fleeting brush of his mouth over hers. “Thank you for marrying me. I am currently no matrimonial prize, and I know it. Your willingness to trust in me and go against your brother, all in the name of aiding me, means more than I can possibly convey.”
But she was not entirely selfless. She would not have married just any man who had been wrongfully accused and staying at Lark House. Her heart beat for this one alone, and he was staring at her now as if she were the most glorious creature he had ever seen. As if she were a goddess descended before him.
In truth, she knew her hair must be hopelessly mussed from sleeping through the night, and she was no great beauty to begin with. But none of that mattered when Griffin was looking at her that way.
All that mattered was him and the way he made her feel.
As if she were the queen herself.
“Thankyoufor marryingme,” she told him seriously. “I am currently no matrimonial prize either, possessing an abysmal talent for crocheting and a former betrothed who thought more of his orchids than he did of me.”
“Flowerpot can take his plants and go rot for all I care,” he said. “If he would prefer to tinker with seed and soil, rather than devote himself to pleasing the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, then he deserves his seeds and his plants and his green bulb fungus, and nothing less.”
She leaned into him then. Leaned into him and settled her lips over his, because he was hers and no one had ever seen her the way he did. And because she felt as if she knew him too, knew him in a way that was profound and poignant and real. Elemental and deep.
She knew about his mother, about his past. And she had begun to know the small fragments of him, as varied and original as the shells she had collected from the shores at Albemarle when she was a girl.
